Lean manufacturing help

[mikejt]

Im doing a college assignment about lean production (kanban keizen and all that)

im stuck on a question about continuous improvement

its asking me to compare and contrast the incremental approach to continuous improvement with that of the large step changes

at the moment i have:

Small incremental changes can be more beneficial to a company as they can take their time spending small amounts of money and reach the same goal as a big change would get them, a big change could involve a period of down-time where the company is losing money whereas small changes don’t take a lot of time. Below is a diagram demonstrating the advantage of small changes:

 

[arseofbox]

Both approaches take forever anyway. I know as Ive just completed integrating such a step change at work - admittedly its not in a manufacturing environment as per, but this should have some use

Standard CI systems tend to use DMAIC or DMADV principles (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control / Define, Measure, Analyse, Design, Verify) - which makes for huge amounts of bureaucracy and death by numbers.

What you find is incremental changes are preferred by businesses as its much easier to make a business case for a series of incremental mini-projects that can be split over numbers of areas, budgets and time periods - big step changes mean massive amounts of manpower and cash and lost production time (typically), which makes todays books (on which the management are rewarded) look appalling.

CI works most effective if the systems are dynamic and the people 'improving' the processes can add / remove bits of the process as they see fit. E.g.: to follow DMAIC effectively you need to complete all of those 5 phases, which usually contain lots of minor cycles eg: get data, analyse, understand shortfall, devise improvement, integrate improvement, try again. But if you know theres a damn big problem, you can cut out the D, M and A phases pretty much completely and start with a blank sheet.

The biggest problem with CI is its just not cost effective to use in some scenarios - I work in the aero. industry and our project lifecycles are 20-30 years with design typically lasting 5 years - you may only see 2 major projects in your working life in some scenarios. You can't feasibly CI in that environment as too much knowledge is lost and other systems change much faster between our projects - so its only really feasible to integrate changes on the fly (and accept that you may have to firefight if they don't work) and do massive refreshes every few projects.

 

[mikejt]

Thank you for that info!! some helpful points in there

i used to have an apprenticeship in the aerospace industry (i presume thats what you meant by aero?) but they laid me off due to slight dermititis reaction to the machine coolants (from the training college who used dirty coolants)

i now work for the glass manufacturing industry (pilkington glass)

anyway, thank you for your help!

Mike

 

[arseofbox]

i used to have an apprenticeship in the aerospace industry (i presume thats what you meant by aero?) but they laid me off due to slight dermititis reaction to the machine coolants (from the training college who used dirty coolants)

WTF?

I thought an employer was expected (under the Disability Discrimination Act) to make reasonable adjustments if you needed it.

TBH Id have thought barrier cream / gloves could have alleviated that and not affected your work.

Glass industry eh?....can you continously improve manufacturing processes in sealing DG panels, and then send me all the 'not quite acceptable' in the following sizes...

What can you tell me about how K-glass achieves its U-value through how its manufactured?

 

[mikejt]

WTF?

I thought an employer was expected (under the Disability Discrimination Act) to make reasonable adjustments if you needed it.

as i was only in my 1st year, the contract states that the company, me or training providor can chose to terminate the training without any reason

TBH Id have thought barrier cream / gloves could have alleviated that and not affected your work.

They said they couldnt have me working on the machines wearing gloves

Glass industry eh?....can you continously improve manufacturing processes in sealing DG panels, and then send me all the 'not quite acceptable' in the following sizes...

we just make the sheets of patterned or "low iron" glass, no sealing

What can you tell me about how K-glass achieves its U-value through how its manufactured?

I dont work in that area but as far as im aware, the glass is given a coating after it has been produced which allows the suns energy to pass through but keeps heat from radiators in...

Mike